Her risky new job isn't the only change in Katie Couric's life. Here's how she's handling her two growing girls, a new romance, and her 50th birthday.

Most Read

Everyone assembled in the New York City photo studio seems stuck in a kind of low-key limbo. The photographer checks lights and chats with an assistant while others sip coffee or browse idly through magazines.

Suddenly, the room hums with a current of energy, as if someone flipped a huge power switch. Katie Couric walks in briskly, smiling that famous smile, apologizing to all in that familiar, slightly crackly voice. "Sorry I'm late, guys, but I took a walk in the park and then I had to answer all these e-mails," she says, plunking down a cereal bowl containing traces of the Greek yogurt she ate for breakfast on the way over.

She wears a black linen shirtwaist dress with sweet copper-colored ballet-style shoes. Even without makeup, she looks radiant and rested, her caramel-toned skin glowing. With a month off between jobs, she went to the Bahamas with two of her best friends and hung out with her daughters, Ellie, 15, and Carrie, ten, at the beach. But her energized vibe is not entirely the result of a rare, refreshing holiday or a more civilized schedule that allows her to sleep until at least daylight. Getting back to work has provided the real adrenaline rush.

As the whole world knows by now, she has taken on a historic, groundbreaking new job as the first-ever solo female anchor of a nightly network news show. Now at the helm of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, she is also serving as the program's managing editor, as well as doing stories for the network's 60 Minutes and anchoring CBS News prime-time specials. This is the gold standard, the real deal: serious news, not made more palatable for the morning nor pushed aside for an update on Britney Spears's marital woes. Couric is chomping at the bit.

As she preps for the picture-taking, quickly putting on and peeling off different outfits, springing up from her makeup chair to apply her own mascara when time grows short, she starts a spirited, engaging stream of talk that continues through lunch.

"If I said I wasn't trepidacious at all -- there's a good SAT word -- I would be lying," she says of this new chapter in her life. "Every time you make a big change that gets a lot of attention, it's a bit -- what shall I say -- anxiety producing," she admits. "I may lay a big fat egg." She shrugs and gives a little laugh. "I just hope this is fun. I said to the people at CBS, 'This better be fun.'"

Couric has always known how to have fun, although the adjective most commonly used to describe her -- perky -- doesn't do her justice and understandably annoys her. It's the label she got stuck with mostly because of her small stature and undeniably cute face (although, as she has pointed out, age has lessened her "chipmunk cheeks"). Yet she does have a big, irrepressible personality. As she is being driven through Manhattan later in the day, she answers her cell phone by saying, "The woman who never stops!" When she spots a mother and daughter she knows on the street, she rolls down the window, sticks out her arm, and waves to them. After the photo shoot, she put one of her bras into her large leather purse, then stuck her used breakfast bowl on top. Now, on her way into a restaurant for lunch, she looks down at the open purse. "Oh, great -- my bra is sticking out of my bag," she says with a laugh.

In her new assignment, Couric is attempting a dizzying high-wire act that goes well beyond just anchoring the news: CBS is looking to her to hold on to viewers at a time when cable and the Internet are luring them away, to increase the number of women watching, and to improve ratings for the CBS newscast, long ranked third among the three major networks. Everything from her wardrobe to her choice of stories is being carefully, endlessly scrutinized.

"It's a little daunting to be somehow the personification of one giant leap for womankind," she says. Couric acknowledges that being a woman means "there are things that I care about that maybe [ABC anchor] Charlie Gibson isn't that interested in, like hormone replacement therapy." She knows that her interest in medical stories -- which dates from late husband Jay Monahan's battle with colon cancer -- is one that millions of women share. "I became very interested in medicine," she says, "because I had to learn so much in such a short time. Women are often the caretakers for their families' medical needs." But, she's careful to add, she is also "fascinated by foreign affairs, government, and politics."

Either way, she won't be straitjacketing herself: "This is not your grandfather's newscast," she declares, though legendary anchor Walter Cronkite has given symbolic approval by recording the opening voice-over for the broadcast. "I think people are ready for an anchor who's multidimensional, who's not so detached," says Couric. "I hope I do this job with humanity and heart. And intelligence." As part of her less formal approach on air, she is engaging in more spontaneous back-and-forth conversation with correspondents. The rest is still evolving. "I'm just going to have to feel it out. Some things are going to work and some things aren't," she says matter-of-factly. "I believe in noble failure."

Not that she has any intention of failing. "I've always tried to follow my heart," she says of her decision to leave the Today show, where she was cohost for 15 years. Her choice was made both thoughtfully and instinctively. Couric had reportedly been offered a roughly $5 million raise to stay (she eventually took the CBS job at a salary of about $15 million, close to what she'd been making at Today). She solicited opinions from her kids, who urged her to go to CBS, and from her parents: "They were torn between security and the understanding that I needed a new challenge," she says. She also consulted with what she's called her "kitchen cabinet" of friends and advisors, including Wendy Walker, executive producer of Larry King Live and a friend since they both started in the news business. "Katie is one of those people you can call in the middle of the night when you can't sleep. Everybody thinks she's their best friend because that's how she treats people," Walker says, adding that when it comes to her professional duties, Couric "puts her heart and soul into everything she does."

At her new job, Couric is, she says, a "full partner in the creative process," which is a bit like lighting a fuse under a Roman candle. Last summer, she went on a whirlwind trip to six cities, trying to get a sense of what Americans want from their newscasts and, in her "spare" time, hosting fund-raisers for cancer research in each city. (In Minneapolis, she took time out to pose with the city's statue of Mary Tyler Moore and, Mary-like, toss her baseball cap into the air.) Some critics, she says, felt that she could have stayed home and read market research on what people want. Not good enough, in her opinion: "Talking to people face-to-face versus reading some complicated research -- it's just not the same thing."

No one knows better that television news is a bottom-line business, and there's a tartness in Couric's voice when she talks about it. "I saw Al Roker the other day, and we were saying that stories are often done purely for ratings, more often than not," she says. "I understand there has to be a mix -- every story can't be about children dying in the Congo. But at some point, there's got to be a self-imposed mandate to do important stories because it's the right thing to do."

One thing Couric is not doing -- or trying not to do -- is dwelling on her early reviews. Not long ago, she ran into Barbara Walters -- who cohosted the ABC evening news for a brief, ill-fated stint in the mid seventies -- at a cocktail party: "[Walters] said, 'You'll be great, you'll be fantastic. Just don't read anything.'" But Couric, who has been at the well-publicized receiving end of some negative, hurtful stories, seems to keep tabs on her press. A year and a half ago, several articles attacked her for all manner of shortcomings, from too many hairdo changes to an offscreen feud with Matt Lauer ("I love Matt!" she protests now) to a high-handedness with Today staffers. "I think there are a lot of angry, frustrated people, and I think that sometimes they happen to be writers," she says. "Our society still has a difficult time accepting strong, powerful women and not typecasting them as evil, power-hungry lunatics." So, she has decided, "I'm going to be on a blackout for the first few months." Bad press, she says, "can sort of suck your spirit dry."

But that's unlikely to happen to Couric, who seems quite content with who she is. She is one of the few women in the public eye who voluntarily reveals her age -- "I'm turning 50 in January," she says, then adds that she wants to have a dance party to celebrate the milestone. When someone suggests that "50 is the new 30," Couric is quick with a good-natured comeback. "I think 50 should be the new 50," she says -- although she later kids, "Sometimes I'm so tired, I feel like 50 is the new 80."

While she says she occasionally wishes she had "the skin of a 22-year-old," she hasn't considered going under the knife. "I see so many women with plastic surgery, and it's so obvious to me. I'm really going to try to resist. People have got to see images of women on television that are realistic. But call me in ten years -- I may change my mind."

When it comes to getting older, "I'm OK with it," she says quietly. "From personal experience, I always consider the alternative."

Cancer has taken not only her husband but also her sister; in 2001, Emily Couric, a Virginia state senator and the oldest of the Couric siblings, died, at 54, of pancreatic cancer. The pain of these losses has eased somewhat ("I hated everyone and everything," Couric said several years ago about the aftermath of her husband's death, "except for my children and a few of my friends -- and even some of them I hated"). But she is still wistful. In hindsight, "I would have gotten Jay a colonoscopy when he was 35," she says -- though when she's asked if Monahan would have done it at that age, she smiles. "No," she concedes.

Together, the couple bought a country house in a quaint town north of New York City where they and their girls retreated for weekends. Now, eight years after losing her husband, Couric has bought a handsome, seven-bedroom shingled house near the beach in the Hamptons. "I remember when Jay was really sick, and I said, 'I can't imagine coming here [to this house] without you.' And he said, 'Well, hopefully it will be full of happy memories.'" It has been, she says: "I love the house, I love all the memories it has. But after a while" -- her voice falters for a moment -- "those don't really sustain you." Life in that town is couples- and family-oriented, she adds, and "lonely for me." She has friends at the beach, and she finds it livelier -- suitable to a woman who likes going out, particularly after years of being too tired, thanks to the Today show's predawn wake-up call.

Couric has dated a handful of men since Monahan's death -- a several-year romance with television producer Tom Werner was followed by sightings of Couric with jazz trumpeter Chris Botti (she says she and Botti are only "very good friends"). But she confirms that she's seeing Jimmy Reyes, a successful Washington, D.C., beer distributor and divorced father of two. "He's got a very busy life, and I've got a very busy life," she says, but "we've been able to have a lot of fun together. And that's about all I want to say." Except to object, vehemently, to an article in a supermarket tabloid claiming she canceled a secret wedding to Reyes. "I actually had a friend say to me, 'Are you getting married?' I said to her, 'Are you on crack?' It's the National Enquirer."

But Couric can be serious on the subject of matrimony. "It's an institution I feel extremely comfortable with," she says. "I'm a pretty traditional person, and I loved being married. So, you know, having something on the other side of my bed besides books, papers, and reading glasses is a very nice idea."

Right now, the most meaningful relationship in her life is with her children. "I'm proud of both of them," she says. "I think they're developing into really fine human beings." Carrie is "a little more like Jay -- more introverted, more cautious," while Ellie is "a little more like my personality, a little more" -- she holds up closed hands, then opens them suddenly for an in-your-face gesture -- "bleh!" Ellie has entered adolescence, but Couric says she has "a really good head on her shoulders. Now watch her get busted for drug smuggling!" Couric can't resist a comic moment, leaning into the tape recorder and urging her older child to wait at least a year before messing up: "Come on, Ellie, work with me here," she says.

"I'm trying to raise two girls in a normal way despite the fact that my life is abnormal in many ways," she continues. "And" -- she pauses, as if considering whether she will jinx things by talking about her success as a parent -- "so far, so good. Knock on wood. I'm trying to keep them grounded and give them good values and be a good example." Noticing a tattoo on a woman's arm, Couric confesses that, in the midst of a "midlife crisis," she briefly considered getting a small, discreet tattoo herself, then decided against it: "I don't want my daughters ever to get a tattoo," she says. "I just thought, I can't do that and tell them not to."

She does her best to be a hands-on mother, and she is hugely sympathetic to demands on working parents. During her years on Today, she would occasionally leave the show before it wrapped for the day to attend one of her children's school functions. She always encouraged Matt Lauer to tell the audience exactly where she had gone -- wanting the viewers to know that her duties as a parent were as crucial as her job. "I thought that was really important," she says.

Still, Couric is a single parent with a crammed schedule, and she relies gratefully on a woman who has cared for her girls for many years: "She's fantastic. She's like a second parent to my children." With her new schedule, Couric can fix breakfast for her kids and be part of their morning routine -- "I'll be able to take Carrie to school for the first time since she started, though pretty soon she's going to drop me like a hot potato." Still, she adds, "sometimes I feel like, Oh my God, this is going to be so overwhelming." She's counting, as ever, on her own instincts to tell her when life is getting too crazy for her family, and she will make the necessary adjustments.

Travel for her new job is being decided on a story-by-story basis. "If something like Katrina, God forbid, happens, of course I would cover it. At my very core, I'm a reporter," she says. What she won't be doing is what she calls "parachuting" on a breaking story -- dropping into a hot spot and upstaging the in-place correspondents just to garner ratings. "I want to make sure that when I do travel, it's for the right reasons."

There was some commotion when a report claimed Couric was balking at reporting from war zones because of her single-parent status. Today she is quick to clarify: "If it advances the story, that would be one consideration," she says. "But there are also, obviously, family considerations that are part of the decision-making process. I said in an article that they should be a consideration for everyone. I think every company has to realize that family matters."

Overall, the excited moments outweigh the anxious ones. "I'm happy," she says in the backseat of the car that is taking her to a post-lunch appointment. Her father, 86, and mother, 83, still live in the Arlington, Virginia, house where they raised their family. "They take great care of each other, and they're sharp as tacks," says Couric, who sees them as often as she can: "I still go home and check out the refrigerator, and my mom makes me my favorite potato salad. I'm crazy about them. I used to say when Jay was alive that I'd rather double-date with my parents than anyone else." Her friends, some of whom she's had for more than 25 years, "really anchor me," calming her when she gets what she calls "hyper."

Hyper seems to be her happiest mode, though. In addition to her professional duties, she's written two children's books, and she continues to raise millions for colorectal cancer research. "I feel very grateful," she says. "The people I love are in good health, and my children are thriving." As always, when she fears she sounds treacly, she undercuts herself with a sarcastic aside -- "Kumbaya!" she exclaims now -- but she is genuinely thankful. In ten years, "I hope I'll be sitting on a beach writing a book," she says.

But don't count on it. For now, she's off on a new adventure, taking the rest of us along for the ride.

Life Lessons for Katie

Everyone from Barbara Walters to the man on the street has told Katie Couric what she should -- and shouldn't -- do in her new position as anchor of CBS Evening News. But Couric herself is happy for the words of wisdom. "A lot of people -- women and men -- have told me to focus on the work and just be myself," she says, adding that she'd also like to know how other high-profile women deal with challenges. Here, then, is what some notable women have said about getting what you want in life.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, 64th U.S. secretary of state"Inevitably, if you aim high enough, you will be buffeted by demands of family, friends, and employment that will conspire to distract you.... You will find your strongest beliefs ridiculed and challenged; principles that you cherish may be derisively dismissed by those claiming to be more practical or realistic than you. But no matter how weary you may become in persuading others to see the value in what you value, have courage still -- and persevere."

MAYA ANGELOU, poet and author"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

MERYL STREEP, 13-time Academy Award–nominated actress"Integrate what you believe into every single area of your life. Take your heart to work, and ask the most and best of everybody else too. Don't let your special character and values -- the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth -- get swallowed up by...complacency."

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund"You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.... Don't assume a door is closed; push on it. Don't assume if it was closed yesterday that it is closed today. It doesn't matter how many times you fall down, it just matters how many times you get up."

ANDREA JUNG, chairman and CEO of Avon Products
"You have to combine instinct with a good business acumen. You just can't be creative, and you just can't be analytical. If you feel like it's difficult to change, you will probably have a harder time succeeding. Constantly look for new ideas, new eyes, new perspectives."

OPRAH WINFREY, media titan
"You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.... I don't believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness."

ANNE SWEENEY, cochair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney-ABC Television"My mother told me to believe that the only obstacles you're going to have are the ones that you fabricate for yourself.... If you don't know how to do something or if something scares you or looks impossible, you're going to work a lot harder. Whether you have succeeded or failed, there's more gratification in trying something that you haven't done and didn't know how to do."

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, U.S. secretary of state
"There is nothing wrong with holding an opinion and holding it passionately. But at those times when you're absolutely sure that you are right, go find somebody who disagrees. Don't allow yourself the easy course of the constant 'amen' to everything that you say."